This invention relates generally to devices for use in smoking, and, more particularly, to devices for helping a smoker overcome an habitual desire to smoke.
In recent years, it has become generally known that tobacco smoking has a significant adverse effect on the health of smokers. As a result, many smokers have sought to stop smoking, or at least to reduce substantially the amount they smoke. The addictive nature of tobacco smoking, however, has frequently made this goal difficult to achieve.
Many devices and techniques have been devised to help a smoker reduce the amount of his smoking, but none is believed to have been completely satisfactory. One popular class of devices includes various types of filters to remove portions of the harmful components of tobacco smoke prior to their being inhaled by the smoker. These devices have not proven entirely satisfactory, however, because in removing the harmful components, the devices likewise reduce the degree of satisfaction that the smoker is able to receive. Thus, the user of these devices frequently will smoke a greater amount than he did previously, in order to achieve an equal degree of satisfaction.
Another technique for reducing an habitual desire to smoke, utilizing a psychological approach known as aversion therapy, has been practiced by a number of anti-smoking clinics that have operated in recent years. In one phase of this therapy, a smoker is asked to repeatedly draw smoke from a smoking device such as a cigarette, while simultaneously a skilled technician administers a small, but annoying, electrical shock to his skin. This causes a general feeling of discomfort, which the smoker subconsciously associates with his acts of smoking, thereby developing in him a subconscious aversion to the act of smoking. Although this particular aversion therapy technique has proven effective at reducing the habitual desire of a smoker to smoke, it has not proven entirely satisfactory, primarily because it is generally an expensive procedure, requiring the presence of a skilled technician, and because it generally can be performed only at selected, infrequent times.
It will be appreciated from the foregoing that there is a definite need for a simple, yet effective device that can automatically and contemporaneously produce an annoying effect every time a user draws on a smoking device, whereby a subconscious aversion to the act of smoking can be developed without the need for the presence of a skilled technician. The present invention fulfills this need.